But to elaborate, the answer is illusionism about phenomenal consciousness, the only (physicalist) account of consciousness that seems to me to be on track to address the hard problem (by dissolving it and saying there are no phenomenal properties) and the meta-problem of consciousness. EDIT: To have an illusion of phenomenal properties, you have to model those phenomenal properties. The illusion is just the model, aspects of it, or certain things that depend on it. That model is (probably) some kind of model of yourself, or aspects of your own internal processing, e.g. an attention schema.
To prevent any misunderstanding, illusionism doesn’t deny that consciousness exists in some form, it just denies that consciousness is phenomenal, or that there are phenomenal properties. It also denies the classical account of qualia, i.e ineffable and so on.
I think illusionism is extremely crazy, but even if you adopt it, I don’t know why it dissolves the problem more to say “what we think of as consciousness is really just the brain modelling itself,” rather htan “what we think of as consciousness is really the brain integrating information.”
The brain modelling itself as having phenomenal properties would (partly) explain why people believe consciousness has phenomenal properties, i.e. that consciousness is phenomenal. In fact, you model yourself as having phenomenal properties whether or not illusionism is true, if it seems to you that you have phenomenal consciousness. That seeming, or appearance, has to have some basis in your brain, and that is a model.
Illusionism just says there aren’t actually any phenomenal properties, so their appearance, i.e. their seeming to exist, is an illusion, and your model is wrong.
The hard problem is dissolved by illusionism because phenomenal consciousness doesn’t exist under illusionism, because consciousness has no phenomenal properties. And we have a guide to solving the meta-problem under illusionism and verifying our dissolution of the hard problem:
we find the models of phenomenal properties in our brains (which exist whether or not illusionism is true), and check that they don’t depend (causally or constitutively) on any actual phenomenal properties existing, or
we otherwise give a persuasive argument that consciousness doesn’t have any phenomenal properties, or that phenomenal properties don’t exist.
On the other hand, saying consciousness just is information integration and denying phenomenal properties together would indeed also dissolve the hard problem. Saying phenomenal consciousness just is information integration would solve the hard problem.
But both information integration accounts are poorly motivated, and I don’t think anyone should give much credence to either. A good (dis)solution should be accompanied by an explanation for why many people believe consciousness has phenomenal properties and so solve the meta-problem, or at least give us a path to solving it. I don’t think this would happen with (phenomenal) consciousness as mere information integration. Why would information integration, generically, lead to beliefs in phenomenal consciousness?
There doesn’t seem to be much logical connection here. Of course, beliefs in phenomenal consciousness depend on information integration, but very few instances of information integration seem to have any connection to such beliefs at all. Information integration is nowhere close to a sufficient explanation.
And this seems to me to be the case for every attempted solution to the hard problem I’ve seen: they never give a good explanation for the causes of our beliefs in phenomenal consciousness.
From my comment above:
But to elaborate, the answer is illusionism about phenomenal consciousness, the only (physicalist) account of consciousness that seems to me to be on track to address the hard problem (by dissolving it and saying there are no phenomenal properties) and the meta-problem of consciousness. EDIT: To have an illusion of phenomenal properties, you have to model those phenomenal properties. The illusion is just the model, aspects of it, or certain things that depend on it. That model is (probably) some kind of model of yourself, or aspects of your own internal processing, e.g. an attention schema.
To prevent any misunderstanding, illusionism doesn’t deny that consciousness exists in some form, it just denies that consciousness is phenomenal, or that there are phenomenal properties. It also denies the classical account of qualia, i.e ineffable and so on.
I think illusionism is extremely crazy, but even if you adopt it, I don’t know why it dissolves the problem more to say “what we think of as consciousness is really just the brain modelling itself,” rather htan “what we think of as consciousness is really the brain integrating information.”
The brain modelling itself as having phenomenal properties would (partly) explain why people believe consciousness has phenomenal properties, i.e. that consciousness is phenomenal. In fact, you model yourself as having phenomenal properties whether or not illusionism is true, if it seems to you that you have phenomenal consciousness. That seeming, or appearance, has to have some basis in your brain, and that is a model.
Illusionism just says there aren’t actually any phenomenal properties, so their appearance, i.e. their seeming to exist, is an illusion, and your model is wrong.
The hard problem is dissolved by illusionism because phenomenal consciousness doesn’t exist under illusionism, because consciousness has no phenomenal properties. And we have a guide to solving the meta-problem under illusionism and verifying our dissolution of the hard problem:
we find the models of phenomenal properties in our brains (which exist whether or not illusionism is true), and check that they don’t depend (causally or constitutively) on any actual phenomenal properties existing, or
we otherwise give a persuasive argument that consciousness doesn’t have any phenomenal properties, or that phenomenal properties don’t exist.
On the other hand, saying consciousness just is information integration and denying phenomenal properties together would indeed also dissolve the hard problem. Saying phenomenal consciousness just is information integration would solve the hard problem.
But both information integration accounts are poorly motivated, and I don’t think anyone should give much credence to either. A good (dis)solution should be accompanied by an explanation for why many people believe consciousness has phenomenal properties and so solve the meta-problem, or at least give us a path to solving it. I don’t think this would happen with (phenomenal) consciousness as mere information integration. Why would information integration, generically, lead to beliefs in phenomenal consciousness?
There doesn’t seem to be much logical connection here. Of course, beliefs in phenomenal consciousness depend on information integration, but very few instances of information integration seem to have any connection to such beliefs at all. Information integration is nowhere close to a sufficient explanation.
And this seems to me to be the case for every attempted solution to the hard problem I’ve seen: they never give a good explanation for the causes of our beliefs in phenomenal consciousness.